Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimates his Department has made of the number of NHS and social care staff who may lose their employment as a result of the introduction of compulsory covid-19 vaccination in that sector.

Decisions on the dismissal of unvaccinated workers, rather than redeployment, if an option, or unpaid leave, will be for individual employers, therefore no specific estimate has been in the Department’s the impact assessment. The impact assessment estimates the number of workers who may remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 at the end of the 12-week grace period and are not medically exempt. This estimated to be 73,000 for National Health Service staff and 38,000 for social care workers in scope. The impact assessment is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039988/making-vaccination-a-condition-of-deployment-in-the-health-and-wider-social-care-sector-impact-assessment.pdf

Actual figures will depend on individual decisions and the positive choice to take up the offer of COVID-19 vaccination. The Government is focussed on improving vaccine uptake within the health and care workforce and the numbers of vaccinated staff are increasing. There are now 75,000 additional staff working in the NHS who have received a first dose of the vaccine since September.